12.30.2011

Living Room: now painted, someday furnished

Last week, on the eve of our Christmas vacation, we finished the wall painting in the living room. Check out the how awesome the color (Sherwin William's Rhinestone, first introduced here) turned out:

We love how the soft, light gray brightens up the space during the daytime hours...

...and the lighter, more whitish hue it takes on in the evening when lit by our lamps--though now that I'm looking at this photo I see the yellow bulb has an intensely warm wash here.

Ah well, you know what I mean!

We still have the trim to finish painting white, but thanks to the leather samples that we recently received, I'm already dreaming of our new sectional sitting on the soon-to-be-installed maple flooring. We've narrowed the leather options down to four colors. Black, a chestnut brown, gray and a nearly-black shade. Our two favorite shades are the bottom two on the photo. My favorite is the gray, though I worry that it may become dated with time. Mike likes all four shades, but holds the nearly black color, a shade called smoke, as top choice.

Here's some mock-ups of our top picks:

The gray leather shown above is my favorite--most of the time. (What can I say, I tend to always second-guess my decisions. Just ask my mom about my wedding dress or my husband about choosing any entree when we're out for dinner!)

The smoke leather above is hubby's top. I also really like this one but worry that it'll be this huge dark piece that'll suck the light out of our space. After all, it'll take up a large portion of the room, demonstrated when we taped up the dimensions:

So, what do you think? Gray or smoke? Keep in mind we've painted since the above photo, we'll be taking down the blinds and putting in maple wood floors. We'll also be adding in pops of color with our accessories--pillows, art, etc.

@Karen G @ It's Still Life Thanks Karen! Yes, we already painted the back wall of the room (shown in the back of the last photo of the taped outline behind the railing) black. I agree that a big black wall, a big black TV and a big almost-black couch may be too much big and black!

Thanks Wom-Moms. The decision came after a long time--after the move. So it's actually really great that we didn't pull the trigger right away and buy the wrong thing. Basically, the IKEA Karlstad sectional felt like too much of a compromise for us because it (a) didn't have a sleeper bed in it, (b) had detached back cushions instead of a tight back and (c) wasn't in a color we loved. We decided that rather than spend the money on something we would likely replace down the road, we'd save our pennies for just the right thing that met all of our criteria. Room and Board's Ian Leather Sectional fills the bill. We can customize it to be everything we want, making it something we'll likely have for the rest of our lives. Thanks for asking!

I'd go with the gray too just by looking at the mock-up with the black wall in the background it may be too much (as you and others have already noted). Can't wait to see the new flooring in there and all the pops of color you've yet to add!

On another note, I painted my living room walls a very light purply gray, and I also love how the color looks different at different times of day. I would lay on my couch and watch my walls as the sunlight would move around my room.